Collection: Rogelio Orobia

MAESTRO R. OROBIA is an event organizer, art educator, socio-civic leader, theologian, philanthropist, writer, media broadcaster and photographer.

MAESTRO ROGELIO B. OROBIA was born on February 6, 1956 in the town of Pili, Camarines Sur. The young Orobia was destined to be a prominent painter being the grandson of Juan Orobia, a popular artist in the province of Camarines at the time. His father Gerardo was also an artist of note, doing interpretations of local landscapes and portraits of famous people, realistically portraying the character and grace of its many subjects. Orobia grew up in Naga City where at the tender age of 11, he began to be fascinated with the arts, started sketches and drawing on any clean face of paper he can get hold of. He used to scan comics, magazines and newspapers for reproductions of paintings and studied the strokes that he can discern and copied them. His teenyears were a life of hardship, finding work in a bakery, and always examining paper wrappers of 'pandesal' for picture of artworks. In school, he was introduced to drawing shapes and figures showing an advance state of awareness than his classmates.

His salary from his bakery employment mostly went to the purchase of crayons, watercolors, drawing papers, pencil and other sketching paraphernalia. His self-study however brought him to the art shops and galleries in Manila. During his early post teenyears, his first sale was to a laundrywoman, a landscape for meager twenty (20) pesos, significant not only in value but in the recognition of the work. This sale brought him so much joy in finding someone who finally appreciated his craft.

Orobias sojourn in Intramuros (oldest district of the present day City of Manila, the capital of the Republic of the Philippines), honing his craft through self-imposed sacrificial apprenticeship with established artists, was dominated by only one traumatic experience – poverty and economic deprivation. He barely had three square meals a day. His only gratifying consolation was that he continued to study at first hand, the style and color play of the masters. His other reward came when he was accepted as member of the Christian Artists Society of the Philippines where he found himself in the circle of his idols and fellow artists. In the late 80’s, Orobia finally began to develop his own unique style